ANDY FINCH and his family had just returned from an adventure-packed summer holiday when he woke up one morning with flu-like symptoms.

The AV installation engineer, now 47, assumed he just had a cold but when it failed to improve and he was unable to speak, his wife Gail ordered him to go straight to his GP, near their home in Willenhall in the West Midlands.

But far from receiving the standard advice to go home and rest for a few days, what followed was a nightmare scenario for Andy and his family.

After five days of what he describes as a “blur of tubes, bags and medicines”, Andy was told he had myeloma, an incurable bone marrow cancer.

Related articles

“After being such a super-fit and healthy person all my life, to be faced with a diagnosis of an incurable cancer at such a young age was a total game changer,” recalls Andy, who has a daughter Holly, 22, and a son Bevan, 13.

Myeloma, also known as multiple myeloma, is a cancer caused by abnormal cells in the bone marrow. Around 5,500 patients are diagnosed every year in the UK and the majority of cases occur in those over the age of 65.

The diagnosis was a total game changer

Andy Finch

Following a six-week stay in hospital Andy was allowed to go home. But that same evening as he was relaxing in a warm bath, events took a terrifying twist.

He says: “As I was lifting myself up out of the bath, my right arm shattered due to the myeloma and as I fell back into the bath, three vertebrae were crushed – I was in complete agony.

“It took three burly paramedics to get me out of the bath and back into hospital. This setback put me in a hospital bed for three months and I had to learn to walk all over again. Nothing I have been through before or since can compare.”

GETTY • MODEL

Andy had been a super-fit and healthy person all his life

As Kevin Boyd, a consultant haematologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital, explains, “One of the specific characteristics of this disease is the way that it can erode bones to cause bone pain and bone fractures. Vertebral fractures can cause long-term pain and disability in some cases, even after the disease has been brought under control.”

Although it is still incurable, treatment of myeloma has come a long way in recent years.

“Treatment includes chemotherapy and bone-strengthening drugs and in the majority of patients the disease can be controlled for many years,” says Dr Boyd.

Biological therapies such as bortezomib (Velcade), lenalidomide (Revlimid) and pomalidomide (Imnovid) work by helping the body to control the growth of cancer cells.

GETTY • MODEL

Myeloma can't be cured but symptoms can improve with chemotherapy

Last week myeloma patients were thrown a lifeline when drugs funding body Nice recommended pomalidomide for those who had relapsed for a third time. It said the drug will be funded immediately through the new Cancer Drugs Fund.

Four years on, Andy is currently taking Revlimid and cyclophosphamide (a chemotherapy treatment). He says the impact on his family of living with the disease has been huge and their lives have changed dramatically. Overnight Gail, 48, became her husband’s carer.

“When Andy was first diagnosed I didn’t feel like I had any support,” she says. “I found it hard to talk to people – if it was taking me half an hour to explain his condition, I knew they wouldn’t understand how I was feeling. I wished that I had one person that I could talk to, someone who would understand.”

GETTY

Initial symptoms could feel like the flu

The couple are passionate about the need for physical and emotional support for carers.

“Patients are taken care of and looked after at every step,” says Andy. “But for carers the devastating blow of a loved one being diagnosed with cancer makes a huge impact on their lives and if unchecked can become quite crippling.

“Cancer is a diagnosis that affects whole families, not just the patient, and a carer who feels supported is much stronger than someone who feels isolated, abandoned and racked with guilt.”

Andy now works with his local myeloma support group and has helped to set up a counselling service for carers.

Celebrity cancer patients and survivors

Tue, January 26, 2016

Here are 10 celebrities who put up a strong fight against cancer and came out victorious.